Woman regains eyesight after eleven years of living in darkness

Valentina Yelistratova, 26, got in a traffic accident and seriously hit her head. As a result, the young woman felt her eyesight got worse and soon she became absolutely blind. In eleven years, the woman miraculously regained eyesight and believes it was God that helped her see the world again.

Photo: Woman regains eyesight after eleven years of living in darkness

The tragic accident occurred eleven years ago when Valentina together with her husband and their three-year-old daughter were driving in their old car to a neighboring village to visit relatives. The young woman took a sit near the husband who was driving the car and the little daughter was on the back seat. Once of a sudden, another car rushed out. Valentina’s husband managed to pull up in time and drove the car down into a ditch, but still he could not avert a collision. The oncoming car hit exactly the part of the automobile where Valentina was sitting. The woman hit her head and lost conscience.

The driver who caused the traffic did not suffer at all and he immediately took the bleeding woman to a hospital. At that, Valentina’s husband and daughter did not suffer either. The woman came to herself in a day after the traffic accident and felt at once that her eyesight got much worse. However, doctors assured that the loss of eyesight was the result of a blow in the head that she had suffered and said that she would soon regain her eyesight.

When Valentina was discharged from the hospital she realized her eyesight was irretrievably lost. Numerous visits to highly professional ophthalmologists brought no results. Doctors insisted that Valentina was absolutely healthy, and the woman hoped that one day she would feel better. But no miracle occurred, and one day she could not see at all.

Valentina’s husband would not live with a disabled wife and abandoned the family for another woman. His leaving was a terrible shock for the woman and she got absolutely grey-headed at the age of 35. Valentina tells that she did not lose her heart because of her disablement. She learnt to orient herself in the house and outside and soon could do simple work about the house. Her parents persuaded her to learn the Braille alphabet so that Valentina could read books.

But the young woman was particularly upset with the fact that she could not see her little daughter grow up. Valentina could only imagine what her darling Polina looked like, and it was her most cherished dream to be able to see the daughter one day. The girl saw her mother crying because of it and comforted her. “My dear mom, God will never leave you and will certainly help you,” the girl said.

Valentina went to church together with her mother and prayed for recovery, but she was doomed to eleven years of living in absolute darkness. Once her father took Valentina for a drive about the city. The woman listened to the father describing the places they were driving by. Suddenly she heard a terrible brake chatter and then felt she was losing conscience because of pain.

As it turned out later, Valentina’s father had a microinfarction when driving a car and he dropped the wheel. The car fell into a ditch; the woman had a serious blow in the back of her head and had grave concussion of the brain.

Valentina was in coma for more than a week. When she regained conscience she felt something miraculous had happened to her. She opened her eyes and could see her mother and daughter. And the very fact that she could see was incredible for her! Valentina was discharged from the hospital in a month. Her eyesight did not recover completely but she was happy that she could even read when wearing glasses.

Medicine experts say that majority of people lose speech and sometimes even memory as a result of head injuries. What happened to Valentina Yelistratova was rather a contusion of the visual sector in the cortex that usually results in the loss of eyesight.

The cortex sector did not restore within the eleven years when the woman could not see. But after another impact upon the brain the eyesight functions switched over to the other sectors of the extensive optic zone that came to the aid of the damaged sector.

Oksana Anikina
Pravda.Ru

Translated by Maria Gousseva